KQ’s Repeat Offenders — and Utne 2.0
Tuesday, October 30, 2007 at 2:59 pm
- 4 Comments
File Under: At Long Last! Congratulations to Utne Reader for jumping recently from Web 0.7 to Web 2.0 in a single savvy redesign. Sorry I didn’t notice it earlier.
Heroic Singleton? Compared to ousted Strib publisher Par Ridder, maybe MediaNews chief William Dean Singleton came off looking good, but is it fair to call the PiPress owner the “unlikely hero” of the newspaper industry? Business Week hails his “ruthless efficiency” as a way to save the industry, but little is said about saving journalism. “He’s shrewd,” acknowledged Larry Jinks, a former publisher of the MediaNew-owned San Jose Mercury News. “But you have to have shrewdness and journalistic passion to create really outstanding journalism, and I wish I saw more journalistic passion there.”
Off-Color KQ, Vol. 4: The KQRS morning show seems to be making its way down a checklist of ethnic groups to insult. First, it was the Hmong, then Somalis and African American hip-hop fans. Now it’s Native Americans. In a show last month, Tom Barnard and cohost Terri Traen ditched compassion in a discussion of high suicide rates among native teens. Said Traen, “Maybe it’s genetic; isn’t there a lot of incest up there?” Native Americans protested at the studio Monday and won a concession from management. The show will broadcast an apology.
Repeat offenders: Rightwing blog Anti-Strib claims native activists aimed to “censure free speech,” instead of characterizing their actions as a legal exercise of that very right. The blog didn’t inform its readers of the “incest” comment or the suggestion of genetic inferiority by KQ’s Traen, but instead linked to a report that confirms suicides among tribal young people are high. “So is the problem because they mentioned it in an unflattering light, or because they dare mention that things may not be a bed of roses on the Red Lake res?” The post ends: “Maybe Bellecourt should focus on cleaning that cesspool up instead of blaming ‘ignorant comments’ for the problems up there.”
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4 Comments
Comment posted October 31, 2007 @ 1:17 pm
Cesspool?? Suicide rates among teens indeed are high on many Indian reservations. It’s also true that there are high rates of abuse of all sorts. But to characterize the situation as a “cesspool” shows an incredible degree of callousness. It’s a serious situation to which many serious people, Native and other, devote time and effort you would have to characterize as “above and beyond.” The situation merits sympathy, understanding and a willingness to help, not vulgar tongue clucking. After all, most of these dysfunctionalities came after and because of domination by alien white cultures.
Comment posted November 1, 2007 @ 10:33 am
MoB bloggers endorse Anti-Strib’s racism with their silence While right-wing bloggers like Michael Brodkorb express faux outrage at Al Franken satire quotes about Native Americans, they remain strangely silent when one of their own club members spews honest-to-goodness racist trash like Tracy Eberly’s at Anti-Strib. Let’s not forget Tracy’s little ode to the First Americans that he penned earlier in October–remember, the one titled “Dirt-Worshipping Heathens”:
White supremacist Eberly is running for “mayor” of the Minnesota Organization of Bloggers. That speaks volumes about the character of their members–virtually all of whom link to the racist Anti-Strib.
Comment posted October 31, 2007 @ 8:17 am
Cesspool?? Suicide rates among teens indeed are high on many Indian reservations. It's also true that there are high rates of abuse of all sorts. But to characterize the situation as a “cesspool” shows an incredible degree of callousness. It's a serious situation to which many serious people, Native and other, devote time and effort you would have to characterize as “above and beyond.” The situation merits sympathy, understanding and a willingness to help, not vulgar tongue clucking. After all, most of these dysfunctionalities came after and because of domination by alien white cultures.
Comment posted November 1, 2007 @ 5:33 am
MoB bloggers endorse Anti-Strib's racism with their silence While right-wing bloggers like Michael Brodkorb express faux outrage at Al Franken satire quotes about Native Americans, they remain strangely silent when one of their own club members spews honest-to-goodness racist trash like Tracy Eberly's at Anti-Strib. Let's not forget Tracy's little ode to the First Americans that he penned earlier in October–remember, the one titled “Dirt-Worshipping Heathens”:
White supremacist Eberly is running for “mayor” of the Minnesota Organization of Bloggers. That speaks volumes about the character of their members–virtually all of whom link to the racist Anti-Strib.
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